“It was absolutely so smooth,” Watson said. “I’ve always played the guitar, but I didn’t know [then] it could be played like that.”

It wasn’t long after that Watson was saving up his money to buy Chet Atkins records at Ma Smathers’ Record Shop in Canton. If he wasn’t working or studying, he was listening to those records over and over, gradually learning to play the chords on guitar. By 11 years old, Watson played his first finger-picking song — “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.”

As soon as he could finger-pick a song all the way through, his parents promised to buy him a new guitar, so in the fall of 1963 they drove over to a music store in Asheville and bought a Gretsch Chet Atkins signature model guitar — the same kind Chet Atkins played. Watson still keeps a black and white photograph of him with that guitar.

Watson has enjoyed a life with music as long as he can remember. He’s a guitar and banjo player, music teacher, recording artist and banjo designer.

Watson credits his parents — John Howard and Della Pace Watson — for giving him the love for music and supporting a career that would take him to shows like “Hee Haw” and venues like the Superdome in New Orleans.

Watson’s mother played piano and would harmonize acappella in a singing group with her sisters.

“She taught me how to listen for the tenor at an early age,” he said.

Meanwhile, his father, John Howard Watson, played fiddle, banjo and guitar and performed with The Sunset Hillbillies. The band played at competitions at area elementary schools and on the WWNC radio station’s Saturday Night Roundup.

Growing up, Larry Watson sought out local talents, family friends, and anyone who could teach him about playing the guitar and banjo. Besides Chet Atkins, other stars he studied were Boots Randolph, Floyd Kramer and Merle Travis.

“At age 11, I was pretending that I was them,” Watson said.

After finishing chores and homework, he’d play the guitar four, five hours a day. By his teens, he was playing in school assemblies and local holiday programs. He’d been on the WLOS-TV Bob Ledford Show.

From an orchestra to a railroad

At 14, Watson went to buy guitar strings at Strains of Music in Waynesville and discovered owner Hal Strain — founder of the Florence, S.C., symphony and an accomplished musician who could play just about any instrument. Strain introduced Watson to Clyde’s Joe Medford, an amazing banjo player who could also play just about anything.

After hearing Watson play some, an impressed Strain offered Watson a job playing upright bass in Strain’s band, a small orchestra that toured all over Western North Carolina. Watson agreed, and pretty soon he discovered a whole new world of local musicians ranging in all ages and backgrounds who spoke the same language of music.

“We weren’t strangers,” Watson said. “They were as much in love with it as I was.”

Watson worked at Strains’ music store and took impromptu lessons from Hal Strain and Madeline Kendrick, who was Hal Strain’s sister and pianist in the orchestra. Up until then, Watson realized, he had been learning all sorts of chords but didn’t really understand how to put them together, how musical notes fit together in a science of sound. Strain and Kendrick provided the kind of education for Watson that might as well have been a music degree. Playing eight or nine years with Strain’s band, Watson picked up a repertoire of 500 songs including tangos, rumbas, waltzes, jazz, big-band music, and more. It was a musical galaxy of wonder, and Watson explored it all, realizing the big band glory days wouldn’t last forever.

“I knew to savor that,” he said. “It was pretty music; it was soothing.”

Later on, under the guidance of Sherry Bradenburg, Watson studied the numerical analysis of Chopin’s piano works and the intricacies of his arrangements, getting inside the mind of the genius composer and learning how to compose music of his own.

“His melodies were so haunting,” Watson said. “I just wanted to get into the mindset.”

During the 1970s, Watson competed in and won music contests at folk festivals and played in a couple of bluegrass bands. By 1979, he joined up with The Southern Lawmen, a string band made up of railway detectives.

Watson was hired on as an investigator and eventually became a special agent for Southern Railroad — which later became Norfolk Southern —and worked as a federal agent investigating railroad thefts.

It was a strange twist of fate to be working for a railway company since the first finger-picking guitar song Watson ever learned to play was “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.”

The band toured all over — St. Louis, Kansas City, Raleigh, Richmond, and Washington, D.C. They played for the Virginia state legislature, the International Chief of Police convention in New Orleans, and for all sorts of conferences, retirement parties and meetings. They played in the Superdome and on the country music variety show “Hee Haw.”

The ride lasted nine years. By the end of the ‘80s, Watson was missing Canton, so he moved back home. Watson has three daughters: Leslie, who had made the all-state orchestra as a high school violinist in Charlotte; Amy, also in Charlotte, was an honors student violinist; and Sydni, who plays guitar as well as string bass and keyboard. You might say the Watson music tradition is alive and well.

A Music Business

Watson has loved being able to collaborate over the years with fellow musicians. His early interest in the banjo was inspired by Haywood County banjo pickers Roy Kirkpatrick and Carroll Best, as well as Marc Pruett and Steve Sutton. Watson has performed with legendary fiddle master Mac Snodderly. With Snodderly, Watson recorded three cassettes.

Watson has released two new CD’s — Reflections and Thoughts of Yesterday, both recorded at Sleeping Wolf Studio Productions in Maggie Valley. Studio owner Michael Youngwood produced both. While Reflections is a guitar solo project that is a collection of old-time jazz favorites, Thoughts of Yesterday includes his first original song, which is the title track, as well as some recordings with his daughter Sydni on string bass, Tyler Kirkpatrick on dobro, and Darren Nicholson on mandolin. Watson plays banjo and guitar on the album and does vocals.

Meanwhile, Watson is also designing a pair of custom-made, five-string banjos — the Watson Downhome Model with nickel plated hardware and a mahogany back; and the Watson Appalachian Model with gold-plated hardware and a curly maple back. (Check out photos and ordering information on the Website www.watsonbanjocompany.com)

In addition to his new CD recordings this year, Watson also has an instructional DVD on how to play the five-string banjo. Students get the basics on the numbered string method and learn how to play 10 songs. Plans are also in the works to make an instructional DVD for guitar players from beginning levels to advanced.

Teaching Lessons

In addition to his music business, Larry Watson also teaches guitar and banjo playing to students. For some 30 years and has taught thousands how to play the banjo and guitar. He currently has a regular list of about 40 students a week — all ages — mostly from around Western North Carolina but from as far away as east Tennessee, South Carolina and Ohio. Students range in ages from 4 to senior citizen retirees looking to play old favorites.

“I believe music is something everybody can enjoy,” Watson said.

In the first floor study in his house in Canton, they will learn songs and a basic understanding of chord progressions, frets and how notes in a song fit together.

“I work mainly one on one, but sometimes we have small ensembles in here,” Watson said.

On a Thursday afternoon, 8-year-old A.J. Hawkins of Crabtree is learning to play the opening chords of “Sweet Home Alabama.” With a six-string in his hands, he follows Watson’s instruction as to where the fingerings for the chords need to be. Having already learned certain chords, he goes right along learning a song he’s never played.

Rather than giving his students scales to memorize and sheet music to study, Watson starts them off with what they want to know, what songs they’d like to play. It may sound a little unconventional, but he just wants to get to the practicality of playing right away.

“I want to know what they musically are interested in,” he said. “It allows them to be part of the decision making process.”

Students first learn the notes by ear and mirror Watson’s guitar fingerings, or chords, to figure out how a song is played. Watson feels this method is more important than first learning abstract music theory or memorizing scales. The first thing to do is train the ear, he explained.

When it comes to playing, Watson likes the edgy quality to a song, not the polished piece empty of emotion.

“You’re playing it like you feel it,” he said.

At the beginning, he’ll work on the nucleus of a song, the basic chords that will determine the notes in a song. Knowing that you start in the key of D, for example, becomes the starting point for every note in the rest of the song.

“You want to make a big picture small,” he said.

Watson will do a chord count, using the musical scale of notes to count out the number of chords you’ll need to know to play in a given song. Chords become coordinates on a map, so you simply plot from point A to point B to find your way through the song.

“But you have to do that with your ears,” Watson said.

As the music lessons progress, Watson will ask his students to hear the difference between different chords and learn what sounds right. The idea is to visualize the fingerings of a chord and hear how it progresses. Then once you know the song, Watson explains, you can improvise on it and give it a new signature.

A student of music

Watson listens to all kinds of music — everything from Alison Kraus to Andre Previn to Peter Paul and Mary. Studying 17th Century classical songs from the King’s College Choir, he marvels at the way the human voice can become a musical instrument.

These days, Watson is working more in the studio, designing banjos, and working on writing new songs — perhaps there’s a tune he’ll one day pitch to a Nashville country star like Kenny Chesney or Tim McGraw.

Maybe it’s no coincidence that Watson has been playing Aerosmith’s song, “Dream On.”

On a rainy November day, Watson gets a visit from childhood friend and fellow musician Dale McCoy. The two trade laughs and recall their days in “The Southern Lawmen.” Watson’s big contribution to the band, McCoy declares, was comic relief on those long road trips.

“We’ve had more fun than a barrel of monkeys over the years,” McCoy said. “He’s one of the finest musicians who’s ever been in Haywood County.”

“They don’t make ‘em better than that,” Watson says, returning the compliment to McCoy.

One of the tracks on Watson’s new CD is called “I Take A Lot Of Pride In What I Am.” You can hear that pride in the way he sings, in the way he holds a guitar, in the gentle smile that lingers after he’s finished talking.

For Watson, there’s always more to learn — a new song, a new musician, a new style of playing.

“And it’s never enough,” he says.

Perhaps that’ll be the title of a new song.